Corporate Worship

Is it possible for men to come into a Sunday worship service and reflect: "Now this is a masculine environment?" I reckon it is, but you have to be intentional to get there. Some of our songs lend themselves to a masculine response, and they should be chosen over others. I'm talking about songs full of objective truth that help guys know what they're singing about. As for songs that subjectively express our love or our longing for Jesus, well they are entirely biblical. Just beware of unbalance. A normal masculine man is going to be troubled by his first visit to church (even if he got saved at Alpha), if it consists of standing to sing for 40 minutes to an ancient Jew words he would find awkward writing in a card to his girlfriend! You know the songs I mean. And as a rule, maybe your worship leaders (if they are guys) should be the sorts who remind you of Johnny Cash rather than Art Garfunkel!

Community

Community is an increasingly trendy theme in much western culture, and good thing too, as it's biblical. But again, we need to constantly rescue it from pagan (and often effeminate) distortions. Without essential Bible concepts such as accountability, protection, discipline, and leadership, the concept becomes soupy enough to mean whatever you want it to. And this, again, is what leaves men unreached. The images we tend to celebrate when considering community (certainly in western culture) are family (which also means a lot of things), belonging, compassion, care, and thoughtfulness. Obviously, these are noble and biblical ideas. But on their own, they create an unbalanced environment, and they will not appeal to guys who see other values in community, such as order, camaraderie, mission, teamwork, and brotherhood. This came home to me forcefully in a meeting where someone had brought up the need for people to find a place in God's family. There was nothing erroneous said, but it left me concerned for any visiting blokes whose preconceptions of sentimental church were now confirmed. Before getting up to preach I was thinking, "Guys hear ‘family' as such a weak and syrupy word," and I felt God say to me, "Not if they have just watched The Godfather." When we talk about family, community, and being a people, do we leave out the bits about protecting each other (especially the weak), snatching each other from sin, or speaking the plain truth in love? These and many other biblical expressions of community must come back into our language and practice if we want any hope winning a world of men. Guys don't want to be in a "caring community," but in a "band of brothers." This never fails to bring the best out of them. Max Hastings, in his book about D-Day, states that allied soldiers who survived never recovered the sense of belonging to a fighting force. Their existence really meant something in Normandy. Many felt they were alive for the first time and after the war, craved a return to it despite the danger, never feeling part of a cause again. Well, I have a cause.